FRANKFURT, May 31: Commerzbank, the second-biggest listed bank in Germany, said on Wednesday it planned to cut 900 jobs in its retail banking and IT divisions as part of the integration of the newly acquired real estate financier, Eurohypo.

The cuts would be borne more or less equally by both the retail banking business and the information technology division, board member Achim Kassow said in an interview published on the bank’s own website.

The job cuts would be implemented between the end of 2008, and would not entail any forced redundancies, a Commerzbank spokesman said.

“If we want to remain a big bank in the long term and an independent one as well then what we have achieved so far simply won’t be enough,” Kassow said.

“There are rivals who are more cost favourable and faster growing than we are.”

At Commerzbank, it took up to 30 hours to process a loan application, while other banks did it in only 10 hours, Kassow complained.

Thus, Commerzbank wanted to use Eurohypo’s faster and more modern platform to process all loans for private and business customers and take away the administrative burden from its own customer advisors, he explained.

“Our loan advisors spend 60-80 per cent of their time doing administrative tasks. The burden on branches must be eased so that they can concentrate more on advising customers.”

Commerzbank had already indicated that it expected to generate around 142 million euros ($183 million) in cost savings in 2008, from the integration of Eurohypo. But it had so far not specified how the so-called “synergies” might affect the headcount.

Over the past five years, Commerzbank has already axed at least 6,700 jobs.

It currently employs a workforce of 27,136 worldwide.—AFP